The results are in...SAVE THE HOUSE!

Friday, March 28, 2008 Time: 6:21 PM

The Richter House. Photo by CTblogger

Here's the results to the latest poll...and the response is rather overwhelming.

As the anger over the Richter Park Authority's attempt to close the Richter House grows, for those who are not familiar on the arts and entertainment held at the home on Aunt Hack Road (as well as the history of the land/former farm), here's an episode of the Richter House show on cable access.

GUEST POST: Bush's War

Time: 4:19 PM

I know this is a bit off-topic, but nonetheless, the subject is important to overlook.

Last week marked the fifth year of the Iraq War, PBS' Frontline will present a documentary on the Bush administration's war mongering tactics. In fulfilling a request from a faithful fan of the site, I'm turning over the keys of the site to a reader "I.C. Presumptive" who will elaborate on the documentary as well as offer his views on the Bush administration.

I.C., the floor is yours:Americans now face an undeniably, colossal, political crises that has both immediate governance and Constitutional issues.Channel 13’s Frontline has produced an explicit and consummate summary of the Bush administration’s war mongering and political corruption.Channel 13 will rerun Bush's War on Saturday, March 29 at 3 p.m.,the second part at 5 p.m.

From the evidence presented it would appear the active manipulators would go to any extent to further their ambitions and/or divert public attention from their war criminal behaviors.The question arises, just how far would they go to get what they want?Presidents with far more integrity than that of the Bush Administration have intrigued before.There really is no assurance that this administration will not do so.

The great questions of our times are how are we facing these issues?What will we do about them and how fast will we do it?Given some of the undemocratic warping of our nominally democratic system, its ingrained sluggishness and congestion, how much correction is possible and can it be done fast enough to be effective?

This political review focuses on a war that is depriving every municipality and state government of the resources needed to improve public life.It is has destroyed national resources that could have been used for a national, efficient, health care system, for decent housing, for portable pensions and dozens of other policy supports for citizens.It is still destroying those resources.It seems as though this war was deliberately engaged in, in order to avoid just such policies.For war is very profitable in the short run, it constantly feeds economic fantasies since it’s sheer waste is a perpetual watering hole for investment capital.On the other hand domestic spending would result in a considerable freeing of citizens leading to more productive and meaningful lives.Adequate health care embodies ‘freedom’ in a substantive way.That is the rub.Citizens would not be so effectively ‘chained’ to their jobs.The powers-that-be would weep. The question is who, or more accurately how many, in the Bush Administration have an invested interest in denying such democratic progress and why.

We now have reached 4000 dead young men and women, propagandized into battle to serve a lie.Tens of thousands more are crippled, many functionally inadequate to continue their lives by their own capabilities.This is the public payoff for electing a simpleton and a fascist to the highest offices in the land.If you doubt such characterizations watch the Frontline program. They will become compellingly clear.

The program makes many, specific, burning disclosures that depict several key elements in this administration’s political corruption and degeneration of democratic government.The fault lies primarily with three men, two like-minded, immoral and valueless egos, and one vacant president.

Perhaps the foremost deviation from anything that could be called democratic government was the effort exerted by Vice President Dick Cheney to lie into existence a public fear of "weapons of mass destruction."Through many permutations and twists of doctoring the political intelligence and denying facts, Cheney's propagandists went so far as to plant disinformation at selected prestigious newspapers.Once articles were written from the pseudo facts of these plants, administration spokespersons referenced them as though they were independent, corroborative evidence of factually based opinion.It was a debasing effort.Not only debasing the administration but the newspapers that allowed the deceptions.

Another Cheney device was to funnel intelligence information to Donald Rumsfeld’s controlled team in the Pentagon to ‘make’ suitable war intelligence.This Office of Special Plans by means of a great deal of threats and coercions of CIA and Defense Department analysts succeeded in manufacturing the desired facts to meet the policy.The policy was war by whatever means could be contrived.The purpose was to dismember Iraq as a functioning nation and society so it could be grabbed for oil and Middle East military control functions.

However, the prerequisite in order for these efforts to succeed was the need to also manufacture a systematic mischaracterization of the Constitutional war making powers of the president.This legalistic concoction was also expected to serve to protect the conspirators from war criminal prosecutions. The mere occurrence of their forethought to protect themselves belies their claims of innocence about the evidence methods or their purpose.Yet they make such claims.

The purposeful constructions were placed in the hands of a young lawyer, John Yoo, a willing junior lawyer hired for his political loyalty.He developed, apparently largely by himself, a preposterous S.Y.A (save-your-ass) legal, stone tablet of Constitutional rewrites to cover the Bush war policy.He appears to conceive of himself as one of the sons of the founding fathers, intimate with their thoughts, and therefore thoroughly able to transform their magnificent document of the ages into a little rat’s nest of deceit.

It is interesting to watch this man's TV affects as well as read his written justifications.He effects and certainly projects a perfectly innocent calm.It is a projection of a preposterous, totally uncritical belief in the tyranny he has created.He acts as if he was merely measuring American household rugs for cleaning.The whole pretense is one of innocent Constitutional clarification, meaning of course, perfecting.An immediate viewer response is the apparent lack of any critical thinking.After all, he is conjuring up an American emperor, but claiming it is just an everyday, routine political construction.

He affects that he is merely performing a small part directed to him by a large governmental bureaucracy for which a small bit player like himself obviously cannot have any possible responsibility for the whole.The result is surely a posture of absolute fabrication.Or as Jonathan Raban has wondered, “what kind of wormhole have you entered when the alternative to being afraid of what the government tells you is to be afraid of what it isn’t telling you?

The final and fulfilling necessity for the war plan is a vacant, absent presidency.News clippings, news conferences, interviews of George W. Bush strongly suggest that the man is not ‘there’ when he appears there.Frontline’s narrative gives George W. Bush a rather large benefit of the doubt while the visuals disclose that he is seldom ‘there’ when he so appears.This was and remains a Teleprompter presidency.The speeches are prepared, he is handed them at the last minute, he reads them, and the performances are more or less successful depending on how uncritical the public is toward the entertainment.For entertainment is surely what it is.We now know there was seldom a shred of truth to the whole war producing enterprise.The media concoctions were, as they still are, completely formulated for public consumption.As such it makes sense why glimpses of the man on many occasions seem to show that he doesn’t know what he is doing.He doesn’t.He often isn’t in touch and certainly not cognizant of what he is saying.The whole routine comes across as a generic exercise in mindlessness.

Where it is not simply mindless, where the video presentation shows him as ‘present,’ the viewer is left with the edgy feeling that whatever he decided or decides is totally subject to the last man advising him on any particular day.And Dick Cheney, unmistakably, makes certain that he and he alone is that man on every day.Unless, of course, it is Donald Rumsfeld in his place.Think of Chauncey Gardiner in Being There and you will not be far from visualizing the substance of the Bush presidency.

Overall, the totality of Frontline’s factual presentation portrays an ever larger conceptualization that the Bush administration is the most morally adrift, manipulated concoction of indecent government that this U.S. republic has ever produced.Even Richard Nixon at his most thuggish best, pales in comparison as John Dean in his book has testified.

“Republicans have taken Nixon’s disgraced tactics and approach to presidential power as their starting point. They have learned that if caught, deny it. If that doesn't work, ignore the fact you have been caught and just keep doing it, and claim you have the inherent power to do so. They can get away with it because right-wing talk radio and Fox Cable News have become the cheering section that did not exist during Watergate. As for oversight, during the first six years of the Bush/Cheney administration, the GOP-controlled Congress could not even spell the word "oversight." Only now are we approaching real tests of whether the Democratic Congress will go the distance to get the information they are entitled to have.”[ii]

Finally Frontline reveals that in the government process of the Bush Administration, there is no process.This is verified by other observers and participants in the administration.Paul Krugman has pointed out “their initial domestic surveillance program was apparently so lawless and unconstitutional that even John Ashcroft, approached on his sickbed, refused to go along.”[iii]Jack Goldsmith, the president’s legal counsel provides an abundance of their devices in The Terror Presidency.[iv]Lawrence Wilkerson does likewise in a New York Times retrospective biographical sketch.[v]Michiko Kakutani in a review of Fred Kaplan’s Daydream Believers quotes “The Bush Administration’s strategies failed “because they did not fit the realities of his era: They were based not on a grasp of technology, history or foreign cultures but rather on fantasy, faith and willful indifference toward those affected by their consequences.”Kakutani: “In their best intentioned moments, they put forth ideas without strategies, policies without process, wishes without means.”And that is presuming that they ever presumed any ‘best intentions.’

No process.That means there was no moral sense of the way facts were being gathered, no organization of counter arguments, weighing of opinions, resolution of conflicts resulting from these opinions, the careful preparation of a policy to match existing conditions, and no examination of the likely sequences of problems resulting from such a policy.There was only a top down manufacturing by connivance, about contriving a case by bullying and coercion to prepare a system of lies for public deception.It was and is a matter of deceit from start to finish.

In the end we come to the realization that the symmetry of the three men, their narcissistic (totally self-centered) flaming egos, allowed them to gather about themselves the most robust team of political sycophants this world has seen in 60 years and perhaps has ever seen.In addition, typically as narcissists, these are men of absolute certitude, they never doubt, they never question themselves, they are never wrong, they listen to no one. “It has long been clear that President Bush doesn’t feel other people’s pain.His self-centeredness shines through whenever he makes off-the-cuff, unscripted remarks…”[viii]

We are being ruled by men “who are pathologically incapable of owning up to mistakes.”[ix]Our sacred belief that the United States could not produce fascists because of our moral character and democratic system is here given the lie in all its stunning richness and degenerate flavor.

This triumvirate of warmongers has savaged a whole country, shoveling millions of Iraqis into a hell from which hundreds of thousands will never exit.Our government and the public acceptance of its war policy until lately, the raving enthusiasm for war after 9/11 egged on by this administration, has laid waste the Iraqi nation and called it ‘freedom.’No English word on this earth was ever given a more vile reputation on the ground of its application. That is unless we include England ’s grinding dissolution of the Scottish Highlanders and the starving of the Irish people.Those were called ‘pacification.’We shall pay for this travesty for a very long time, the innocent with the guilty, the fellow travelers with the objectors, the young and the old who couldn’t understand, all who refused to examine or denied that a coterie of democracy destroyers had taken over and has abused and continues to abuse the governing processes of the United States .

I.C. Presumptive

[i] Leland, John. United States of Anxiety.The New York Times, book interview withJonathan Raban.My Holy War, New York Review Books, 2005.

[ii] Dean, John W.Editorial Review of Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush.NY, Viking Adult, 2007.From the interview at Amazon.com, Reed Business Information, Reed Elsesier, Inc.Date unspecified.

Union Savings Bank To Recognize Earth Day Artists

Time: 3:24 PM

On Earth Day, my favorite bank announced their intentions to recognize local area youths are who are actively promoting environmental awareness.

Thirty three young poster artist finalists from Bethel, Brookfield, Danbury, New Fairfield, New Milford, Newtown, Redding, Ridgefield and Sherman will be recognized for their artistic talent and environmental awareness during an April 3 ceremony from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the Union Savings Bank Galleria in Danbury.

During the ceremony, each of the regional poster award winners will receive a framed award certificate signed by the Mayor or First Selectman of his or her town and a U.S. Savings Bond. Union Savings Bank President and CEO John Kline and HRRA Vice Chairman Rudolph Marconi will join elected officials from winning artists' towns to present the awards. (The students and their towns are listed below.)

Poster entries from each participating community will be on display through Earth Day, April 22, in the students’ local Union Savings Bank branch.

HatCityBLOG VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Common Council meeting of the whole: Richter Park Authority renewal

Thursday, March 27, 2008 Time: 9:55 PM

Members of the public address the Common Council at last week's public hearing.City Hall, 03.18.08. Photo by CTBlogger

There are several interesting items on next month's Common Council meeting agenda, which were addressed during last week's public hearing/meeting of the whole. One of the items that received the most attention was the renewal of the Richter Park Authority (RPA).

While I'll address the apparent maliciousness of the RPA in regards of the condition of the Richter House later, from last week's meeting of the whole, here's footage of the debate on the renewal of the authority.

Based on the February 5th results, Obama and Clinton are splitting Connecticut's 48 "pledged" delegates 26 to 22. (The other 12 are "unpledged" or superdelegates.) These are actually 26 (Obama) and 22 (Clinton) supporters who are selected and pledge (basically sign a document) to support that candidate in Denver. On Wednesday, 17 of Obama's 26 delegates will be selected at 5 caucuses across the state, one in each congressional district. (There are 5 caucuses happening at the same time in different locations selecting 14 Clinton delegates.)

Each congressional district has a certain number of delegates, again split based on the February 5 results. On Wednesday, 4 Obama delegates (and one alternate) and 3 Clinton delegates will be selected in the 1st CD. The rules are amazingly complex, which should be no surprise to those who have spent this primary season watching TV and thereby getting a PhD in the elaborate Democratic party rules, but if you want to read about them, they're here. For Obama, there will be 2 women and 2 men selected, as well as one male alternate, from a list of eligible Democrats who submitted their names to the Democratic State Committee by February 17 (?). I am part of the slate supported by the campaign in the 1CD. (If you're interested, the entire slate is: Larry Charles, Sophia Danenberg, Val McCall, Shawn Wooden, Alternate: Mayor Scott Slifka.)

[...]

So some of you may have noticed that we are still short 9 pledged delegates for Obama and 8 for Clinton. Those delegates (6 party leaders and elected officials and 11 "at-large" delegates) will be selected a week later on March 26 by the people selected at the congressional district caucuses. (By the way, if you want to get in on all the fun, you can still submit your name to be considered for an at-large delegate slot until Monday, March 17 by faxing this form.) The final delegate decisions must take into consideration the diversity of the delegates (including a certain number of African-Americans, Asians, Hispanic, Native Americans, People with Disabilities, LBGT, Veterans and Youth.)

Then there are those 12 unpledged or superdelegates. 11 are already named. There is one more (an at-large unpledged delegate) who will be elected at the same time as the other pledged delegates.

Finally there are 8 alternates. 5 (3 Obama, 2 Clinton) chosen on Wed and 3 "at-large". My understanding is that the alternates participate in every part the convention the same as the delegates (meetings, etc.) except they don't vote. If something happens to one of the delgates, the alternates should be fully prepared to step in

Your head stop spinning yet? Good, lets move on..

For the Democratic National Convention, Danbury played host to the 5th Congressional district caucus for the Clintion campaign, while the 5CD caucus for the Obama campaign was held in Meriden.

From each caucus held in each of the five congressional districts, 31 people are picked to go to the convention in Denver. Also, remember, the 31 people picked last Wednesday will gather together on March 26 at State Central to pick 17 more delegates (pledged) and one unpledged delegate.

To make things a bit easier, I made the trip down to the Elk's club on Main Street last Wednesday where the Clintion caucus was held and interviewed newly elected pledge delegate State Rep Jason Bartlett about the process.

Although we have the national conventions to deal with, don't forget that they're also a series for state conventions for each of the Congressional, State House, and State Senate seats up for grabs.

Next week (March 25-April 1) Caucuses and Town Committee meetings will be held all over the state for the purpose of electing delegates to myriad conventions in April and May. Start making your calls if you want to get in the game.

The number of delegates is based on democratic enrollment in the town divided up among the different districts that overlie that town on a formula basis. Delegates must reside in the district in which they wish to become a delegate. Any registered democrat can be elected as a delegate. Once delegates are elected Proxies can be used for someone to take their place if they can't go to a convention.

[...]

DELEGATE EVENTS1. There are 72 members of the Democratic State Central Committee. A woman and a man are elected from each of 36 State Senate districts. Once elected, the state Central Committee chooses its Chairperson.Delegates to the State Central election are the same ones chosen to represent the towns at the State Convention and are apportioned by the State Senate districts in that town.

2. The Democratic State Convention has 1500 or more attendees. This year the agenda may include by-laws, resolutions, platform, Presidential Electors. This would be a historical year to be able to cast your Electoral College vote for an African American or woman candidate. CT has 7 electors - 1 for each Rep and Senator in US Congress. All CT official parties choose their 7 electors at their respective conventions. The party with the candidate who wins the most votes gets to put their team to work on the real Election Day in December.

3. Most towns are entirely in a single CD - some are split so they divide their delegates accordingly. Quite often the Congress people have resources to ply the delegates with food and drink making these convention spots the most sought after.

4. Each State Senate District will have somewhere in the range of 40-60 delegates depending on Dem enrollment. Each town sends their delegates to convention. Often towns team up to support one candidate (driven by the candidate that wants to win).

5. Each State House Convention will have 5-25 delegates depending on enrollment. As you can see here - in some heavily Dem districts the real vote comes when the delegates pick the Democratic Endorsed at Convention - Imagine the power when 5 or 6 people at a convention are the ones who really make the decision about who the dem candidate will be.

BECOME A DELEGATE Every Democratic Town Committee has its own process. First rule: call the local Town Chair and ask-- What is the nomination process - When is the meeting State Central rules provide for nominations from the floor. It's usually better to have the local support for your candidacy- Do we have a Caucus or Town Committee Delegate selection process- Are there delegate open slots available- If not, would you put me on a Proxy list so I may go if the Delegate can't

*If you are a Caucus town, bring all your friends out, get nominated and vote the night away. These caucuses are not always well attended but candidates in those districts often put effort in making sure they have many friendly voters to choose friendly delegates. At Caucuses any Democrat may vote.

*If you are a town that let's its Town Committee pick Delegates, get your name in, find out how it works, go to the Town Committee meeting and get your name in nominated. Only Town Committee members can vote in these elections so do some homework, make a few calls - campaign for yourself.

All over Connecticut, Town Committees are looking for people to participate. They need democrats who want to work for candidates and issues, raise money, build the party and participate. If you are not active yet - spend some time to attend the local meeting, go to a fundraiser, volunteer to help. In no time (except for a few cities and towns with super active groups) you can be plugged into the system - and during delegate selection time - it's a great way to volunteer for a pretty important event that often needs participants. But don't just go to a convention and drop out - keep it going. The Democrats need more people willing to help - as do all volunteer organizations.

Here's info about the Dem Calendar and the link to Town Committee phone numbers.

On September 26, 2007, ten plaintiffs filed suit in response to an arrest of aday laborers at a public park in Danbury, Connecticut. Plaintiffs amended their complaint on November 26, 2007.

The amended complaint states that plaintiffs sought to remedy the continued discriminatory and unauthorized enforcement of federal immigration laws against the Latino residents of the City of Danbury by Danbury's mayor and its police department.

Plaintiffs allege that the arrests violated their Fourth Amendment rights and the Connecticut Constitution because defendants conducted the arrests without valid warrants, in the absence of exigent circumstances, and without probable cause to believe that plaintiffs were engaged in unlawful activity. In addition, plaintiffs allege that defendants improperly stopped, detained, investigated, searched and arrested plaintiffs. Plaintiffs also allege that defendants violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights when they intentionally targeted plaintiffs, and arrested and detained them on the basis of their race, ethnicity and perceived national origin. Plaintiffs raise First Amendment, Due Process and tort claims.

THE JOHN McGOWAN DATABASE

All the information regarding the first degree sexual assault case against the 2007 Danbury mayoral candidate and former VP of Elise Marciano's the United States Citizens for Immigration and Law Enforcement hate-group is here!